HARQ (Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest) is widely used in the LTE (long term evolution) 3GPP TR 25.814. Multiple fast retransmissions can help packet reception especially for the UEs (user equipment) at locations with poor channel conditions. However, for a real-time low-rate service, such as VoIP (Voice over IP), the number of retransmissions is limited due to the delay budget and voice frame rate. In a fast fading environment, fast CQI (channel quality indication) feedback can be used by the UE to signal channel quality to the base station. The base station uses this information to perform fast AMC (adaptive modulation and coding) by selecting an MCS (modulation and coding scheme) for the particular UE. However, fast CQI is undesirable due to the significant uplink overhead caused by the possible large number of UEs for such services (e.g., VoIP UEs). An alternative to using fast AMC is to rely on retransmissions to compensate for the fast fading.